Aussies target joker in the pack

A 1-0 Ashes lead is within sight after Australia declared at 7-401 on day three at the Gabba.

IT's always a significant victory for a sporting team if they can take down the joker in the rival pack.

Graeme Swann is not simply regarded as England's premier spinner but a quirky extrovert whose humour and banter provides the dressing room fizz.

Every successful team tends to have one of them - the zany mood-lighteners - and it is always a blow for the dressing room if their smile turns upside down.

Swann, who took 2-135 in the second innings yesterday to go with his wicketless first innings display, faces a major challenge to keep his mojo in tact this summer.

His work at the Gabba lacked snap and crackle.

Part-timer Joe Root looked at least as likely to take a wicket yesterday and Nathan Lyon has put more energy on the ball than both of them. Australia promised to attack Swann and so they did.

Swann, who turns 35 in March, will not want for work when his cricket days are done.

Already there is talk that a television broadcaster has approached him with a view to him becoming a commentator, a role for which he looks perfectly suited.

Ryan Harris celebrates the wicket of Michael Carberry. (AP Photo/Tertius Pickard) Source: AP

FLASH HARRY

JUST because Australia is set for a landslide first Test win does not mean the national selectors won't earn their keep at their next meeting.

The big question is whether Ryan Harris, who has been predictably good at the Gabba, will be rested for the second Test in Adelaide.

You would love to play Harris in back-to-back Tests in Adelaide and Perth but the selectors would never forgive themselves if the workload pushed Harris to breaking point.

Perth must be the priority for it is where Harris steamrolled England three years ago.

But Adelaide is where Harris was raised and it seems unfair to deny him the chance to play in what would be his final Ashes Test at that venue.

It is the toughest of calls.

Alastair Cook picks himself up after avoiding a run out. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

KEV'S CURSE

They call it the Red Bull run.

Kevin Pietersen is renowned for drinking a can or two of Red Bull before he bats and there is a long time theory that the caffeine hit makes his liable to take a reckless early single known as the Red Bull run.

Pietersen dropped one to the off-side to get off the mark yesterday and almost ran out his captain Alastair Cook who may have been saved by the fact that George Bailey dislodged the bail before the ball arrived and had to whip out the stumps.

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STRAIGHT TALK

THERE is a popular theory in modern sport that you don't have to play at the highest level to coach there.

And of course it's true. But there are times when the voice of a big time career can be just what a team needs.

One of the reasons Australia recalled Craig McDermott as its bowling coach is that his 291-wicket Test career enables him to talk to his bowlers in a firm, no-nonsense way that might not come naturally to coaches who have not played at the highest level. His second day lunch time serve to the bowlers, which put them on course a second session rampage, was an example of a timely piece of pulpit-pounding never goes astray.

BY GEORGE ...

George Bailey the Test player remains the riddle that is yet to be answered.

Bailey's dismissal, bowled by a seemingly innocuous Swann ball which beat his outside edge, may not have been pretty viewing yet there were other parts of his innings 34 yesterday that showed he may have an X Factor worth persisting with.

Given that he scored just three on debut in the first innings, you would have thought he might have been cautious yesterday but he became one of that rare breed of Test players to hit a career six before he hit a four when he dispatched a rank Joe Root full toss over the deep mid-wicket.

Then he followed up with another next over off Swann to have two sixes in his first 17 runs.

Bailey has come into the team at a good time. A likely first Test win should guarantee minimal short term pressure and allow him to settle down.

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